This Tomi Lahren Experiment Was a Real Bad Idea

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There’s a reason why it usually doesn’t end well when a kid goes straight from a life of party and privilege to the bright lights of a professional sports career. They have no clue how to handle the responsibility of fame and fortune. Just look at the fall of Johnny Manziel.

There’s a reason why it usually doesn’t end well when someone mired in unemployed poverty wins the lottery and lands in the lap of luxury. They are oblivious about how to maneuver the challenges of money and power. Just look at the depressing case of David Lee Edwards.

And there’s a reason why it usually doesn’t end well when someone who lacks any meaningful or serious understanding of political philosophy and ideology is thrust in front of a camera and promoted as a conservative spokesman. They are pitifully unprepared to exercise the disciplines of reason and discernment. Just look at the sorry spectacle of Tomi Lahren.

In a culture that bizarrely worships youth and beauty, it is unsurprising that Lahren’s rise to fame has been meteoric. And make no mistake, Tomi has certainly demonstrated a talent for increasing her notoriety with provocative commentaries timed to coincide with significant national controversies. Her prolific use of social media has propelled her to over 664,000 followers on Twitter, and earned her invitations onto numerous television news and commentary programs.

If gaining popularity and getting your face on TV were the primary objectives of conservatism, she would be a rock star. But since the movement has always been about the supremacy of our ideas, it’s what she says on TV that matters most. And that’s the great danger of this emerging movement of pop culture “conservatism” driven by followers and web traffic, rather than principles. It’s only a matter of time before it casually defecates in the right’s dinner plate with the whole country watching.

Friday on the obnoxious ABC gabfest “The View,” Tomi Lahren did just that:

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“I’m pro choice, and here’s why. I am a constitutional, you know, someone that loves the Constitution. I’m someone that’s for limited government. So I can’t sit here and be a hypocrite and say I’m for limited government but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies. I can sit here and say that, as a Republican and I can say, you know what, I’m for limited government, so stay out of my guns, and you can stay out of my body as well.”

This is so mindlessly incoherent that Glenn Beck should be humiliated he has given this poser such a platform of prominence. Not just because he’s promoted someone who finds it morally acceptable to kill children for convenience (though that’s plenty good enough), but because she demonstrates such a childish misunderstanding of natural law and constitutional theory.

For someone who just three months ago fumed how abortion was murder, Lahren has not just experienced second thoughts. She has now apparently arrived at the startling conclusion that limited government means not stopping someone from killing someone else. If Lahren is so worried about being a hypocrite, perhaps she should use one of her popular “Final Thoughts” segments to explain why she wants government to tell other people they can’t kill her, but demands that same government not tell her she can’t kill her baby.

This isn’t reason. It’s stupidity on steroids.

The great conservatives have always understood that the intrinsic worth of the individual was the foundation point of all we believe and espouse. Without the right to life, there is no liberty, and there is no happiness to pursue. So here’s a suggestion for all parties involved:

Tomi Lahren: take some time away from the camera, read and learn what conservatism is, and decide if that’s what you are or what you want to be.

Glenn Beck: you spent an election cycle critical of anyone on the right that pretended Trump’s incoherent populism was actually conservatism; will you permit The Blaze to continue pretending Tomi’s incoherent populism is?

Conservatives: let’s stop mimicking the leftist cult of personality approach that embraces whatever is considered trendy, young, and envelope-pushing; instead let’s again be known for the power of our ideas rather than 2-minute YouTube power rants by immature minds.

I refuse to believe that Tomi Lahren is the future of conservatism in America, because if she is, conservatism has no future here.